New Coach, New Class, Same Expectations for No. 10 Men's Soccer

In many ways, the 2010-11 Harvard men’s soccer team has a very different look than its predecessor, which won an Ivy League title and reached the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament last fall.

This change starts at the top, where head coach Jamie Clark is gone, replaced by Carl Junot.  After the 2009 NSCAA Northeast Region Coach of the Year resigned in June, the Harvard athletics department embarked on a nationwide search before deciding on Junot, a Crimson assistant from 2008-10 who served as the head coach at Tufts for just three months before returning to Harvard.

“[Coach Junot] took the best qualities of Jamie and brought them along with his own influence on the game,” goalie Austin Harms said. “I think he’s doing a great job.”

Also gone are the team’s top goal-scorer and its best defender. Hermann Trophy finalist and first-team All-American Andre Akpan ’10, the school’s all-time leading scorer, has moved on to the Colorado Rapids of the MLS, while Kwaku Nyamekye ’10, another All-Ivy first-teamer, was drafted by the Columbus Crew. Akpan, Nyamekye, and their fellow departing seniors will be replaced on the roster by seven incoming freshmen, a class ranked 21st in the country by College Soccer News.

“I think everyone’s going to have to step up and take a little bit more of a leadership role,” sophomore forward Brian Rogers said.

Despite these differences, the high expectations surrounding the team remain the same. After reaching as high as No. 6 in the national rankings in 2009, Harvard enters the season ranked 10th in the National Soccer Coaches Association of America poll as it looks to reach the NCAA tournament for a fifth consecutive season.

But Junot doesn’t feel the high ranking puts an extra burden on the team to succeed.

“The message we send to our players is you’re more than likely going to get the results you want if you enjoy the game,” he said. “As much as possible we try to remove pressure from the equation and create an experience where our players really enjoy being on the field.”

Despite the emphasis on enjoyment, there will certainly be a greater need for the team’s returning players to step up and fill the shoes of Akpan, Adam Rousmaniere ’10, and Desmond Mitchell ’10, who together accounted for half of the team’s scoring last season.

Part of that burden falls on Rogers, the reigning Ivy League Rookie of the Year, who finished second on the team in points (18) and goals (6) last season.

“I think definitely there’s a pressure on me to score goals,” Rogers said. “But I don’t think that pressure falls solely on me...as a whole this year I think we’re going to be a more balanced team.”

Junot also doesn’t see the need for one player to carry the team again.

“Obviously Andre scored a lot of goals here, but I’m a firm believer that goal production is largely based on a team’s ability to find opportunities for players like Andre,” the coach said. “And I feel like we’ve increased our ability to create goal-scoring opportunities with the players that we have.”

Junot is also looking for solid production from his seven-member freshman class that features midfielder Kyle Henderson, an NSCAA/Adidas High School All-American and defender Ross Friedman, who was NSCAA all-region as a senior in Ohio.

“They’re very talented, and I expect them to come in, compete for playing time, and to push others on the team,” Junot said of his rookies.

Senior forward/midfielder Alex Chi, junior midfielder Jamie Rees, and sophomore midfielder Scott Prozeller, all of whom had four points last year, will also be expected to contribute more heavily on the offensive end this season.

Defensively, the team is steadied by its two senior captains, defensemen Jaren LaGreca and Robert Millock. Richard Smith, who started 10 games for the Crimson and was named to the All-Ivy League Second Team as a freshman, will be looking for continued success in his second year.

Behind them, Harms returns in net after a sophomore season in which he finished second in the Ancient Eight in save percentage at .803 and first in shutouts with seven.

“Obviously Austin’s gained a lot of experience being a two-year starter as an underclassman here,” Junot said. “My expectation is that Austin again makes significant gains as a goalkeeper in terms of his ability to read the game, organize the defense, and lead the defense as well.”

Harms will have to really raise his performance if he is going to duplicate last year’s numbers, as Harvard’s schedule features games against No. 8 UC Santa Barbara, No. 12 Boston College, No. 13 Stanford, and No. 22 Connecticut before beginning Ivy League play.

“The reality is our playing schedule is among the very best in the country,” Junot said.

But Harvard’s players believe that last season’s run prepared them well for the high expectations that come with this season.

“I think the experience in big games and against those big teams as kind of an underdog gave me and a lot of the other guys last year confidence with them,” Rogers said.

And this confidence has the Crimson thinking big for the whole season.

“We expect to win the Ivy League, or at least be in contention for the Ivy League, and to definitely make the NCAAs again,” Rogers said. “We’re all really confident going into the season. We’re a much different team than we were last year—we lost some important guys, but we think as a team we’ve grown, and I think we should do even better than we did last year.”

Harvard will have its first chance to prove itself tomorrow night, when the Crimson opens the season against the 13th-ranked Cardinal at home.